People ask me “how do you live every day without knowing how your forming baby is doing?”
Living with the unknown has been one of the hardest lessons that this wild pregnancy has taught me.
I am so grateful to have had this lesson. I missed this lesson with my first pregnancy and I would’ve kept missing this lesson if I continued standard prenatal care with each future pregnancy.
I know this is why God intended for pregnancy to be the mystery that it is. Because motherhood continues to be full of mysteries and we will never know the future.
I didn’t began to feel movement with my current pregnancy until week 16 and I didn’t feel constant movement until week 19.
How did I live for almost 4 months without the constant reassurance that my baby is alive?
I had no choice but to trust the Creator of this baby.
“But you do have a choice- you could get frequent ultrasounds and listen to your baby’s heartbeat with a Doppler at home.”
True, but you only know how your baby is doing in the moment that you see your baby on the monitor or hear their heartbeat with the Doppler. You don’t know how they are doing during the rest of the time.
There is a purpose behind the mystery. There is an extremely valuable lesson.
In motherhood, so much is still unknown. The mysteries don’t end when our baby is born.
We can’t stay up all night to watch our babies sleep. We can’t have our eyes on our children every second of the day as they grow. What about when our teenagers start driving and working?
How can we have peace while not knowing the future?
The only way we can live in peace while not knowing the future is by trusting the Author of the future.
We can choose to put our children’s lives into their Creator’s hands from the moment they are conceived. We can choose to trust a sovereign, omniscient God. We can choose to take refuge in Him.
He wants us to take refuge in Him. He wants to be our source of peace, of assurance, of confidence. He wants us to trust Him with the lives He put on this earth through us. They are not ours, they are His. We can trust that He will care for them. We know how much He loves them.
It is so freeing.
Bible verses to meditate on
Some verses that I meditated on during the first half of my pregnancy as I was learning this difficult, yet vital lesson and that continue to bring me reassurance, comfort and peace:
“You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” Psalms 139:13-16
“You have decided the length of our lives. You know how many months we will live, and we are not given a minute longer.” Job 14:5
“Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith? “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” Matthew 6:27, 30, 34
“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7
“You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you! Trust in the Lord always, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.” Isaiah 26:3-4
“Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!” Romans 11:33
““My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9
“It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in people.” Psalms 118:8
